Many games claim to have piles of guns for the taking. Some even claim to have a bazillion guns. Serious Same Double D XXL is one of the few games to realize that it's no fun to just carry a bunch of guns. You have to be able to shoot them all. What could come off as a gimmick is luckily used as a core mechanic, only adding to the joy of a game full of carnage, oddness, and a few Charles in Charge references.

Not quite a jet, but I'll take it.

SSDDXXL follows the exploits of Serious Sam after defeating the evil Mental, only to find out someone is bringing his armies back, messing with the time stream and generally blowing things up that should stay un blow'd up. Sam and his virtual companion go through time to generally blow the hell out of anything that moves. Story takes a bit of a back seat to the idea of more explosions, more guns, and a few more explosions on top of that. Most of the dialogue sections in the game are meant to advance some humor and break up the action, instead of putting forth any sort of specific story.

The main game will find you shooting up three large acts, with each act taking place in a different time period. Throughout the levels are tons of secrets, be it new stacker arms, new guns, or challenge level tokens. These tokens let you play short levels for lots of bonus cash, very handy for some of the higher cost weapon upgrades. Those syrup launchers don't buy themselves. Local Co-Op brings a welcome bonus, nothing quite like sharing the carnage with a friend. It's hard to explain just how chaotic a game gets when two people are each shooting six guns at once.

Luckily, this screenshot helps show just how nuts it can get.

Throughout your adventure you'll be facing flying kittens with rocket launchers, chimps with battle axes and banana bombs, dinosaurs both with and without cybernetics, and more kamikazes than I can easily count. Often you'll be making piles of bodies a full screen high, which is useful when you need to get to a higher ledge. The game is not heavy on puzzles, but the ones in it usually revolve around jumping, shooting things, or shooting things so you can jump on them. Corpse piles aren't exactly a common trope in games, so it's nice to see it used here. Messy, but nice.

The core of the game revolves around mixing and matching guns. You'll be finding several connectors and weapons, and are able to make a number of weapon sets. Each set can be six weapons high, allowing for.. quite a mess of carnage. Four shotguns? Well that's a wall of buckshot every few seconds. 3 chainsaws and a rocket launcher? Well you have close range covered! A butter launcher along with beetle dispensers? Totally possible, and strangely disturbing. These stacks are easily changed out at any checkpoint, and checkpoints in SSDDXXL are very frequent. I was never made to replay more than a minute of game play due to a checkpoint, and each checkpoint can be re used, in case you need to clear out the enemies, retreat, save, and keep pushing through.

Just as in real life, kittens fly around and drop fiery bombs on people

All in all, SSDDXXL is an awesome game, solo or with the local co op. It offers several bonus levels, a decently long campaign, a few difficulty levels, and tons of gun play. On beating it once, you even unlock a new campaign difficulty with a new character for single player. Playing as this chap gives you a whole new set of dialogue through the story.... some of it quite disturbing. While it's not high on story, Mommy's Best Games delivers on several wow moments that will leave you asking if you really did just see something that crazy. The only downside I found in my eight hour play through was a few times where the game would stutter or lose frame rate during the huge battles, or during one point with a flaming trap that kept raining down. Past those minor technical issues, it's easy to recommend Serious Sam Double D XXL for everyone who likes shooting, looting, and general run hop and gun game play.

James Says, "What's not to love about a game that encourages running around with a laser, a cybernetic bee launcher, and a chainsaw that sucks up money all at the same time?"

__________________"Willy Grogan: Galahad was what they call a knight of the round table, Howie. He was also something of a square. I can't state this as a positive fact, but he probably died very young."